The hideout was dark but not silent: fluorescent bulbs buzzed in their casings, and somewhere beneath the floor, the old building's pipes juddered with every flush or tap of a faucet. The group had reconvened in the library's third-floor alcove, the same battered table as before, but tonight nobody even pretended to spread out their books. Naruto slumped in the corner, forehead pressed to the crook of his elbow, the red hair twisted tight around his fingers like a prayer bead. Next to him, Gaara sat perfectly upright, eyes empty and raw above the mask of composure.
Naruto stared at the three strands of hair, watching the way they caught the light: crimson shot through with sunlit copper, unmistakably his brother's. The sight filled him with a twisting, sick joy—relief that Kurama had been there, followed by the dread of what "there" even meant.
Temari took in the group with a sweep of her gaze, then let her eyes rest on Naruto. "You're sure it's his?"
Naruto nodded, jaw tight. "He used to hate that his hair was so bright. Kept it short so he wouldn't stand out." He ran his thumb over the strands, eyes stinging. "It's his. They had him down there."
Kiba shifted, eyes darting from Naruto to Gaara, then back. "If your brother was in one of those cells, Gaara's probably was too." He flicked his can's tab with a snap. "They're both gone now, though. Which means they moved them or—" He didn't finish, and the silence stretched like a wire.
Gaara's voice was flat. "We didn't find any bodies." That was meant as hope, but it landed with a dull thud.
Temari laid both hands on the table, fingers splayed. "We'll keep looking. But first, we need to process what we did find." She turned to Sasuke, who had remained at the back of the alcove, half-shadowed by the tall stacks. His face was as blank as Gaara's, but there was something brittle in the set of his jaw.
Sasuke placed a small USB drive in the center of the table. The plastic shell was scored with black marker: SASUKE, printed in blocky, all-caps letters. "Found it in a office," he said, voice stripped of affect. "Desk was empty except for this. It's a message."
Kiba blinked. "You sure it's not a virus?"
"Already scanned it," Shikamaru said, sliding his laptop out from under a battered textbook. He plugged in the drive with a soft click, tapped at the keyboard, and spun the machine so the screen faced the group.
"Only one file," he announced. "Audio. No hidden scripts." He looked up at Sasuke. "Ready?"
Sasuke nodded, and Shikamaru hit play.
For a moment, nothing. Then, a faint scrape—the sound of a chair sliding on concrete. A voice, cool and slippery as an eel: "Fugaku Uchiha and Mikoto Uchiha have successfully been eliminated. The evidence left on-site will implicate Itachi as the culprit. There are no loose ends on our end."
Naruto flinched. Sasuke's posture didn't change, but the air around him seemed to vibrate.
A second voice came through, deeper, rough around the edges: "Excellent. Uchiha Corporation will provide additional funding for your next phase, as agreed. I'll handle the PR fallout on my end."
The first voice—the one everyone now recognized as Orochimaru—chuckled, low and self-satisfied. "If possible, I would like to continue observation on the younger Uchiha. He shows promising traits. Unfortunately, my current resources are limited."
A pause, then: "That's not possible," the second voice said. "Itachi set up contingencies for his brother. Anything happens to him, the authorities will receive a full dossier."
Orochimaru: "Very clever. Such foresight from a child."
The second voice, colder now: "You have what you wanted. Don't contact me again unless it's a true emergency."
Static fuzzed, then a click. The file ended.
No one spoke for a long time.
Kiba broke first, the words tumbling out in a rush. "What the hell was that?"
Shikamaru stared at his laptop, fingers frozen over the keyboard. The silence stretched until he finally looked up, eyes narrowed. "I don't know," he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. "What a drag."
Naruto stared at the red strands in his fist, heartbeat hammering in his ears. He looked at Sasuke, expecting rage or horror, but found only the hollow calm of someone who had always expected the worst.
Temari closed the laptop with a soft snap. "We'll take this to the authorities. Or to a reporter. Someone will have to listen."
Sasuke's eyes flashed obsidian in the dim light. "We can't," he said, each word sharp and deliberate. "This might be exactly the reaction they're counting on, and we're still missing too many pieces."
Kiba started to protest, but the look on Sasuke's face stilled him.
Temari's shoulders slumped, her fingertips pressed white against the tabletop. "None of you have slept for hours. We meet back here tomorrow after everyone's had food and rest." Her gaze locked onto Sasuke, bloodshot but sharp. "And Uchiha—don't you dare go off alone on some revenge mission before then."
Sasuke didn't argue, just rose from his chair and moved to the window, staring out at the parking lot three stories below. The security lights threw blue shadows across the glass, limning his face in hard lines.
Kiba shook his head, voice subdued for once. "So this is it? The good guys lose, and we just go to class tomorrow?"
"We regroup," Temari said, and for a moment she almost sounded like she believed it. "We survived the lab. That's a start."
Naruto pushed himself up from the chair, joints stiff from sitting too long. The others were already zipping backpacks and collecting scattered notes. He crossed to where Sasuke stood motionless by the window, still staring at nothing. Naruto hesitated, then brushed his knuckles against Sasuke's wrist. "Hey," he said, voice low enough that only Sasuke could hear. "Let's head back."
The walk across campus took longer than usual, the silence between them so dense it seemed to bend the air. It was nearly three AM, and the only other life out was a feral cat and a pair of Beta custodians hosing down the walkways near the student center. The night had lost its edge, and the buildings themselves felt drained of presence, each one lit in sickly pools of sodium orange.
Naruto and Sasuke didn't speak as they climbed the stairs to the third floor. The sound of their own breathing was too loud, their footsteps hollow and mismatched. Naruto felt the red strands pressed deep in his pocket, rubbing the soft ends with his thumb every few steps, grounding himself in the reality of it.
When they reached 327, Sasuke unlocked the door with hands that didn't quite tremble, but weren't steady either. He entered first, then stood to the side and waited for Naruto, a courtesy so rare it only made the moment heavier. The door closed with a whisper, the click barely audible.
Sasuke went straight to his bed and sat, elbows on knees, head bowed. For a while, Naruto hovered near the door, uncertain if he should give space or close it. He settled for leaning against the wall, arms crossed tight. The silence didn't ask to be broken, but Naruto broke it anyway.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Sasuke exhaled, the sound thin and shredded. "Nothing to say."
Naruto hesitated, then stepped forward and perched on the edge of his own mattress, close enough that his knees nearly touched Sasuke's. "You know that's not true."
Sasuke snorted, a sound almost like laughter. "I should have known," he said, voice scraping. "I was a tool, just like my brother. Maybe less than that."
"That's not—" Naruto started, but Sasuke cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"It's fine," Sasuke said. "I'm used to it by now."
Naruto stared at his own hands. "You could call him, you know," he said quietly. "Itachi. Ask him what happened. Maybe there's more to it—"
Sasuke's head snapped up, the whites of his eyes brighter than usual. "Why? So he can lie to my face again?"
Naruto looked away, the heat of old arguments prickling his skin. "Maybe. Or maybe you'll hear something real for once. Right now, we don't know anything."
Sasuke stared at the wall for a while, his jaw working, but didn't argue. Finally he said, "I'll call him tomorrow."
Naruto nodded. There was nothing left to say.
He stood, stripped off his hoodie, and dropped it on the back of his chair. His body felt hollowed out, a suit of skin with nothing inside. Sasuke didn't move from his spot, but when Naruto crawled onto the bed, he felt the pull—gravity, not pheromones—and reached out to find Sasuke already there. They didn't touch, not at first. The sheets were cold, and both lay on their backs, staring at the ceiling like it might offer answers.
After a while, Naruto shifted closer. Sasuke's hand, callused and uncertain, found his. Their fingers laced together in the darkness, a fragile treaty. Neither spoke, and the silence didn't need to be filled. The weight of the day settled around them, soft and relentless.
On the nightstand, the red hair glowed in the streetlight, a reminder of what they still had to lose.
For a long time, neither slept. But eventually, Sasuke's breathing evened, and Naruto let himself drift with it, counting each exhale as proof that at least, for now, they were both still there.
—
Sasuke sat on the edge of the mattress, spine perfectly upright, body outlined by the pallid rectangle of morning sun slanting through the dorm window. The world outside was already awake: construction trucks beeping, distant laughter, the faint drone of a leaf blower two quads away. None of it seeped through to him. His universe was condensed to the small, bright screen in his palm and the message he hadn't yet sent.
"We need to talk." He stared at the draft, thumb hovering over the blue send arrow, before finally clicking it.
The words looked trivial, almost idiotic. But how else did you summon your brother after years of mutual exile and a semester of refusing to open his letters? "Meet me at campus," he'd written first, then deleted it. "I'm ready to hear you out," then deleted that, too. Anything softer was a lie. Anything sharper would only cut both ways.
The synthetic warmth of the phone pressed into his skin, an artifact of waiting. Sasuke let the cursor blink in silence for a count of thirty, then, with a flex of his thumb, sent the message and turned the phone screen-down on the bedsheet. The blankness that followed was almost relief.
He closed his eyes, recalling every step of the night before—the cavernous labs, the metallic scent of disinfectant, the glint of light on Naruto's wet lashes when he'd finally found those strands of red hair. Sasuke could still see the tremor in Naruto's hands as he'd knotted the strands into a tiny, sacred bundle. The sound of Naruto's heartbeat, too loud in the darkness, as they'd walked home together through the tunnels.
The floorboards squeaked; a rush of air signaled the bathroom door opening. Sasuke opened his eyes in time to see Naruto emerge, dressed in jeans and a battered tee, still towel-drying his hair with one hand. The shirt had a bleach stain on the shoulder. The wrist, where Kurama's hair now lived in a tight knot of friendship bracelet, was bare and unmistakable.
Naruto's gaze fell instantly to Sasuke, reading the stillness on his face like a weather report. "You look like you've been shot in the chest," Naruto said. "Twice."
Sasuke blinked. "You're dripping on the floor."
"Am not," Naruto replied, and dropped the towel onto Sasuke's feet as he crossed to the bed. He nudged Sasuke's thigh with his knee, then flopped onto the mattress beside him, lying flat so their heads lined up. "You're thinking about him, aren't you?"
There was no need to clarify who. Sasuke looked up at the stained ceiling tile, then at the phone. "I texted Itachi."
Naruto rolled onto his side, propped his head on his hand, and watched Sasuke with solemn blue eyes. "Did you say what happened last night?"
Sasuke shook his head, jaw set. "Just that we need to meet."
Naruto's gaze drifted to the edge of the bedsheet, where the phone sat face-down like a severed limb. "You want me there?"
The question hung between them, heavier than it should have been. Sasuke's chest tightened with the sudden, fierce desire to say yes, to keep Naruto's steady presence beside him like a shield. His fingers twitched toward Naruto's wrist, where his brother's hair now lived. Then he remembered Itachi's eyes the night of the fire—how they'd reflected nothing, revealed nothing. "I need to do this alone," he said finally, his voice low. "I don't know who he is anymore. What he's capable of."
Naruto pushed himself upright, his weight shifting the mattress. "That's exactly why I should come with you." His eyes locked onto Sasuke's, blue and unyielding as a summer sky. "I'm not letting you walk into whatever this is by yourself."
Sasuke sat up as well, reaching forward to press his forehead against Naruto's. "I'll be fine," he said, voice low but steady. "I promise." Naruto's eyes searched his—blue and wide and worried—looking for reassurance. Sasuke exhaled slowly. "I just need to see who he's become before I bring anyone else into it. But I don't think he'd hurt me. Not physically, at least."
Naruto's lips pressed into a thin line, his eyes narrowing slightly. Sasuke's gaze dropped to his mouth for just a heartbeat before he forced himself to look away. This wasn't the time. Naruto sighed, relenting. "Fine. But I want updates. Every hour, on the hour."
Sasuke smiled—a rare, unguarded expression that felt foreign on his face. The weight of Naruto's concern settled over him like an unexpected warmth. In mere months, this loud, stubborn Omega had become essential in ways Sasuke had never anticipated. Marriage had always loomed in his future—a cold arrangement with some suitable Omega his family would approve of. But this—Naruto's blue eyes fixed on him, demanding his safety—this wasn't duty. This was something he had no name for yet.
Sasuke's phone vibrated against the sheets, fracturing the silence between them. His hand darted for it, fingers trembling slightly as he swiped the screen open. The message waiting for him made his breath catch.
Itachi: Name the time and place. I'll be there, little brother. I always will.